Finham visiting Robin Hood Primary School in Birmingham

On January 30^th, the two Hanban teachers and six of their Year 9 students, who are taking Mandarin GCSE course, from The Schools Network (SSAT) Confucius Classroom Finham Park School, were warmly invited to join the Chinese New Year and Lantern Festival celebration in Robin Hood Primary School in Birmingham. There they met teachers and students from The Kingsley School and Myton School, both from the Midlands area.

The celebration was held in the hall in Robin Hood Primary School. The first performance was from Myton School. Mrs Helen Lewis, the Mandarin teacher, and her students did a tongue twister on numbers, which caused much laughter. Then a group of girls sang two lovely songs, “two tigers” and “little monkeys”, accompanied by their teacher Mrs Jo Harper. Their singing and dancing brought so much fun to the audience, which was made up of about seventy primary students and their teachers, that some of them even sang along with them. 

The two Hanban teachers from Finham Park School brought their performance as well. Firstly, Miss Du Xiaojie, together with her students performed “Greetings to you (Gongxi Gongxi Ni)”, a traditional CNY song. Secondly, Mrs Liu Yang amazed the audience by performing the Tai’chi Fan. It was fabulous to see all the audience gasping whenever the fan was opened. Lastly, a group of over thirty primary students of Mrs Simone Haughey from Robin Hood Primary School sang a beautiful song in Mandarin.

After the show, Mrs Simone Haughey showed some fantastic photos and videos taken during their two school trips to their sister school, the Second Experimental Primary School in Beijing. The students said they have even more motivation to learn Mandarin and interest to visit China after seeing these. The celebration was ended by all the participants singing Happy New Year together.